This work is centered on my experience as a woman, a survivor, a host. It acts as a proof of my existence. My photographic images are drawn from stories, dreams, and feelings about my own experiences and illustrate struggles that I and many women face through their lives. My title comes from the poem Planetarium by Adrianne Rich, which, to me, represents the universal struggles of women — with a spin on defiance and perseverance. I am interested in the complexity of being a woman biologically, socially and historically.
My photographs are made with the wet-plate collodion technique, commonly used in the late -19th century. The slow process of pouring the sticky, volatile, and flammable emulsion, which records my experiences for centuries to come, allows me to embrace my past gradually. As I carefully mix acid, alcohol and salt to let the molecules work together to bring the latent images alive, I wonder about and consider my body as a collection of cells that encompass my ancestral history and that also carry traces of my children — dead and alive. For me, noble metals I use interpret and capture the intrinsic value of a female body and soul.
Planetarium
by Adrianne Rich

Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster   
a monster in the shape of a woman   
the skies are full of them

a woman      ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments   
or measuring the ground with poles’

in her 98 years to discover   
8 comets

she whom the moon ruled   
like us
levitating into the night sky   
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness   
ribs chilled   
in those spaces    of the mind

An eye,

          ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
          from the mad webs of Uranusborg

                                                            encountering the NOVA   

every impulse of light exploding

from the core
as life flies out of us

             Tycho whispering at last
             ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see   
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain   
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse   
pouring in from Taurus

         I am bombarded yet         I stand

I have been standing all my life in the   
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most   
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep      so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15   
years to travel through me       And has   
taken      I am an instrument in the shape   
of a woman trying to translate pulsations   
into images    for the relief of the body   
and the reconstruction of the mind.

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